Garden State Discovery Museum

In my semi-monthly attempt at being a Good Mommy and infusing my children with 'culture' of a sort, the three of us trooped down I-295 to Cherry Hill. After a few misteps with the directions thanks to those damn NJ dogleg exits to make left turns, we arrived. Just as all the school buses were loading up to leave, the timing was nothing less than exquisite. I also scored parking karma with a spot right by the entrance.

It's a bit of an irony that the GARDEN STATE Discovery Museum is in an office/industrial park with greenery limited to a few shrubs and grass.

Micah was asleep when we pulled into the parking lot - naturally, what occasion or trip hasn't he slept through? Oma's Special Park, the cherry blossoms, and whatnot. Asleep, zonked out, in dreamland. But he rapidly pulled himself together and was ready to run once we got inside.

Overall, Thea gave this museum a better rating that the Please-Touch Museum in Philadelphia. She got to operate a news camera (several times), make enormous bubbles, look at animal x-rays in a child-sized mock-up of a veterinarian's office and all sorts of other stuff. Micah liked the air vent over which he could suspend a beach ball and watch it float - and I think just having the freedom to run and touch whatever.

While making our last pass at the Channel 6 newsroom, we met a grandmotherly-type lady who asked what type of hearing aid 'she' had. (I'd really need to rack my feeble brain to think of what he was wearing yesterday, but since I rarely allow him to go out in drag, my best guess is navy sweat pants and an orange Tiger Soccer shirt (courtesy of Target, not Princeton.) Rather than beat the point home, I said that HE uses a BAHA. It turns out the woman knew some sign language from teaching dance to deaf students, and she thinks it's a beautiful language so she's hoping SHE (Micah) is being raised bilingual. The cruel little devil who sits in some dark recess of my brain wanted to ask, "English and Chinese?" not the English and American Sign Language that the woman meant.

But I just said, ASL may be beautiful, but HE (dammit) has a physical/architectural problem that can be repaired in time, and HE is a part of a hearing family so he attends an oral deaf education program and if HE's using ASL it will limit the number of people with whom HE can converse. She pulled a bit of a sour face on me, but by then I was clock-watching and ready to get out of there to avoid the afternoon traffic. Conversation over, I don't feel compelled to defend our choices.

On the 'up' side, I bumped into a former Pfizer rep who was at the GSDM with her children - she had left Pfizer before Micah's adoption was in process, so she was surprised that I had two in tow, and she had a new three-month old son in addition to her daughter (who I think is around Thea's age.) She was one of the reps I liked, so it was really nice to see her.

And once we got home I had an email from another friend about their newest, who was born March 29th in Kyrgyzstan.

Aside from our adventure yesterday, the other big news is that Micah peed on the potty today. Naturally when we bought the potty seats for the regular toilets we thought we would be the parents of two girls, so somewhere in the house is the little snap on piece for the potty seat that keeps the mopping up to a minimum. I have to remind myself that it was 20+ months between Thea's first use of the potty (August 2005) and being officially declared potty-trained (February 2007). The end probably not in sight, much as he does love to flush the toilet.

I will upload my photos soon - I've got to get them into Kodak Gallery before Micah figures out how to get his hands on the camera and deletes them.